Teaching Faculty

Our teachers have extensive personal meditation practice and retreat experience, and years of teaching meditation to individuals and groups. All have completed our Meditation Teacher Training Program, abide by our Ethical Guidelines, and attend PISAB's Undoing Racism training. We regard contemplative practice as a means to help others create more meaningful personal lives and careers, as well as the foundation for an equitable and harmonious world.

Mona Chopra, MA, MS, L.Ac., is an acupuncturist, hypnotherapist, therapeutic yoga and meditation instructor whose work is guided by the belief that the capacity to heal is boundless, and the capacity to love without limits is what liberates us. The Buddhist teachings and practices have resonated deeply with Mona, and have helped her wake up to experiencing the magic present in every moment of life - be it one of joy or even of sorrow. Mona is grateful to all her teachers, in the myriad forms they appear. She is a graduate of IDP's year-long Meditation Teacher Training Program. For more information on Mona: www.peopletreewellness.com.

Emily Herzlin is a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher trained through the Center for Mindfulness. She is a Mind-Body Therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and founder and lead teacher at Mindful Astoria, a meditation community in her neighborhood in Astoria, NY. She has been a student at the Interdependence Project since 2005, and is a graduate of IDP's Meditation Teacher Training Program. She is also a published writer with a particular love for memoir and poetry. She received her MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia University's School of the Arts in 2012.

Kimberly Brown is IDP's Executive Director and also a teacher and a graduate of the 2011 Meditation Teacher Training Program. She leads mindfulness and compassion classes, workshops, and retreats for groups and individuals. Kim studies American and Tibetan Buddhism and practices lovingkindness meditation. Her teaching methods integrate depth psychology, compassion training, and traditional Buddhist techniques as a means to help everyone reconnect to their inherent clarity and openness. Discover more about Kim and her teaching at her website.

Dan Cayer is a nationally certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and a meditator in the Shambhala tradition. After a serious injury left Dan unable to work or carry out household tasks like cleaning dishes, he began studying the Alexander Technique. His return to health, as well as his experience dealing with the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of pain, has inspired him to help others. Dan now teaches the Alexander Technique as a method of recovering balance and well-being. He advocates it as a fantastic embodiment of mindfulness and awareness both on and off the cushion.

Jane Chun is a lifelong student of the art of moving through the world from the inside out – how we can cultivate our inner lives and ride the waves of life in connection to the wisdom and compassion inherent in our heart, mind, and body. Her training is grounded in multiple lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, inspired at first by the teachings of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. She has worked as a humanitarian and development professional with NGOs and UN agencies in the US, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. Her academic and PhD work at Oxford University and other research institutes explored the intersection of the human mind and decision sciences, human vulnerability and resilience, human mobility, environmental change, and conflict and peacebuilding. She holds a master's in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University and a master's in music from Indiana University. She is a graduate of IDP’s 2016 Meditation Teacher Training Program.

Rob Codling is a native New Yorker (fu-get-da-bout-it), whose path towards awakening has taken him around the world for the past 15 years, to study in a variety of wisdom traditions ranging from Tibetan Buddhism, to Shaolin Cosmos Chi Kung, to the indigenous wisdom of the Americas. He is a a graduate of the 2015 IDP Yearlong Meditation Teacher Training Program and holds a master's degree in Archetypal Cosmology and Conscious Evolution from the Graduate Institute. His practice focuses on using meditation as a powerful vehicle in being kind and gentle towards ourselves. He finds extreme hope in the notion that we can always begin again and is deeply grateful to teachers and his meditation practice for continually reminding him of this.

Maho Kawachi, is a Tokyo-born journalist living in NYC for many years, Maho completed the IDP Meditation Teacher Training Program in 2011 and continues to study with IDP Founder Ethan Nichtern. She is aided and hindered in her search for enlightenment by her lovely dog and her equally lovely husband.

Heidi Marben, PsyD., has been teaching in schools for more than thirty years. She holds a master’s degree in Elementary and Special Education, and a doctorate from NYU in School and Child Psychology. Heidi has worked for the past 11 years as the lower school psychologist at Trinity School, where she has developed and taught a mindfulness curriculum since 2009. In addition, Heidi maintains a private practice in Greenwich Village. She has studied and practiced Buddhism for 14 years and is interested in the exploration and application of Western and Buddhist psychological theory and practice, and is a graduate of IDP’s Yearlong Immersion Program. She takes great joy in working with children and their parents.

Nandini Naik has been an IDP member since 2009 and she graduated from its Meditation Teacher Training Program in 2011. Nandini was born and brought up in Mumbai, India, and was introduced to meditation as a child. After graduating from college she volunteered to teach Tibetan refugees English in Dharamsala, and was later inspired by this experience to write and produce a play, "Turbulent Tibetan," while in NYU's graduate program in teaching English and Theater. She taught English and Theatre to ESL immigrant students for six years at an amazing NYC public high school. She now spends her time meditating, painting, writing, dancing, cooking, laughing, and swimming. She's a striving entrepreneur, and happy to have a beginner's mind.

Ellen Scordato has been a student of yoga and meditation for more than 20 years. Her practice got serious when she and a business partner bought the literary agency they worked for 15 years ago, and she realized that when she complained about the boss, she was looking in the mirror, leading to a a lifelong commitment to exploring lovingkindness, awareness, and waking up. A graduate of the 2014 IDP Meditation Teacher Training Program, the 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Om Yoga in 2005, and 2010 Shambhala Guide training, Ellen loves and honors the Shambhala, Zen, and Tibetan buddhist traditions and currently studies with a Tibetan teacher. She joined the IDP in 2006, where she continues to study, lead, and co-teach Introduction to Meditation and Basic Meditation classes.

Jackie Stewart is fascinated with interpersonal relationships. Holding bachelor's degrees in both Communication Studies and Leadership in Organization, she is committed to finding mutual understanding between humans. With a master's in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, she works at mindfully finding the balance between the outer world of the fashion & entertainment industries and an inner life of feeling "whole and enough." With formal training in the theater arts, a certification from UC Berkeley’s Science of Happiness Program, and as a graduate of IDP’s 2015 Meditation Teacher Training Program, she fuses her diverse background and hopes to share the curious mystery of life with others by dancing together through this balancing act.

Sharon Salzberg is IDP's Lineage Mentor. She is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She has been a student of meditation since 1971, guiding meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon's latest book is Real Happiness At Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace, published by Workman Publishing. She is a weekly columnist for On Being, a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and is also the author of several other books including the New York Times Best Seller, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program (2010), Love Your Enemies (2013), Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience (2002), and Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995). For more information please visit: www.SharonSalzberg.com.